A smarter drug war: Early release for those who get clean and stay that way

Star-Ledger File PhotoTwo-thirds of New Jersey's nonviolent drug offenders return to prison within a few years. At $48,000 a year, that's a lot of money wasted on a system that doesn't work.

With New Jersey quick to shove nonviolent drug offenders behind bars, these criminals compose 35 percent of our prison population — the highest ratio in the nation. To house these 7,000 offenders, the state’s taxpayers spend about $340 million each year.

What do we get for all that money? Not a heck of a lot.

For $48,000 a head per year, prisoners receive little, if any, of the intensive drug treatment they need while incarcerated. When they are set free, most return to the drug life — burglarizing and mugging to support a habit they never kicked. Within a few years, two-thirds wind up back in prison.

It’s an expensive, exhausting and senseless game of catch-and-release-and-catch-again.
Intensive drug treatment costs about half as much as warehousing a nonviolent drug offender in prison, so a change in law could save the state $150 million a year, almost overnight.

A proposal by state Sen. Raymond Lesniak would slow the spinning turnstile at the prison gates. Under his bill, inmates diagnosed with addiction problems could complete a six-month prison education program to cut their sentence by two years. Then they would undergo two years of drug rehabilitation, followed by three years of parole supervision.

Along with saving mountains of money, treatment and education would turn more nonviolent drug offenders into productive — tax-paying, not tax-draining — members of society.

Lesniak says the law could lead to the closing of a prison wing. Some states, with similar legislation, have closed entire prisons. So, along with ending an expensive game of Whac-A-Mole, the bill makes fiscal sense at a time when the state is broke.

If Gov. Chris Christie keeps his word, Lesniak’s bill will have bipartisan support. During the campaign, Christie offered 88 ways he would fix New Jersey, and one promised to “make the streets safer and reduce recidivism” by “requiring drug rehabilitation and vocational training for nonviolent drug offenders.”

Christie could build on the momentum created in 2010 when Democratic and Republican lawmakers voted to allow judges to waive mandatory sentences for school-zone drug offenses, if those crimes didn’t involve children.

Obviously, the state’s approach hasn’t worked. New Jersey has spent hundreds of millions of dollars imprisoning nonviolent drug offenders, turning many into career offenders and lifetime drains on the system — when an earlier diversion to treatment, or a diagnosis of mental illness, would have removed them from the treadmill.

Lesniak’s bill is a no-brainer. Treatment will save money, make our streets safer and provide a far more sensible way to deal with this challenge.